FCC Proposal to Unlock the Set-Top Box - Petition

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vtools.elb

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FCC Proposal to Unlock the Set-Top Box - Petition

#1

Post by vtools.elb » Sat Apr 09, 2016 10:05 pm

Hello folks,

I got this in my email the other day and wanted to share it with you. It's from an organization called American Commitment and it warns "Don't let Obama take control of your TV" - Stop the cable box mandate. The site allows you to sign a petition. Here is the link:

https://www.americancommitment.org/cablebox-petition

Judge for yourself if this something for you. I receive no benefit from this effort - I just wanted to share with this group.

This probably has to do with the FCC Proposal to Unlock the Set-Top Box from January of this year. Here is the FCC link:

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-propos ... et-top-box

Sharks

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#2

Post by Sharks » Sun Apr 10, 2016 9:10 am

Your joking right?

This provides quite the benefit to the consumer as it forces cable companies to allow third party devices such as: "Roku, Apple TV, ect." to see their signals and be able to play them and even suggests on-demand content be done this way as well... Currently your only option for copy protected content at all is Tivo or WMC which Microsoft killed in Windows 10. Let alone there are only a few things that support cable cards: Ceton PCIe4/6/eth6, Silicon Dust HDHomeRun PRIME, & Tivo...

I'm not sure what else to say about why this isn't a bad thing for the consumer or at least with the way I read that FCC document on it.

Embiggens

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#3

Post by Embiggens » Sun Apr 10, 2016 2:39 pm

All great points, Sharks, but the clumsy attempt to tie this to Obama might be all it takes to counter your arguments for some folks.

werds

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#4

Post by werds » Mon Apr 11, 2016 3:06 pm

Yea, American Commitment is a non-profit set up by some of the wealthiest donors on the conservative agenda and it is used as a way to astro-turf arguments through faux grassroots campaigns. I knew the name sounded familiar because they also attempted similar on net neutrality and a few other things. It is actually a very popular thing for big money donors to do in order to protect their interest. Smart to say the least. Also note who some of the previous KNOWN donors are - notice how the National Cable and Telecommunications Association is on that list... they have a stake in making sure things remain status quo.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Am ... Commitment

jmelan

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#5

Post by jmelan » Mon Apr 11, 2016 10:18 pm

this is ridiculous, the opposite is true as mentioned above, DO NOT SEND THIS GARBAGE IN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!

The FCC proposal will do to cable boxes what happened to telephones after the bells lost control - all good for everyone except the cable companies

audinutt

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#6

Post by audinutt » Thu Apr 14, 2016 1:20 pm

Care to elaborate?

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

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rmeden

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#7

Post by rmeden » Sat Apr 16, 2016 6:16 am

So instead of a set top box for CABLE , a CARD will be added to 3rd party devices to decrypt the signal? What a great idea.. wonder what they'll name it?

Space

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#8

Post by Space » Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:58 pm

That petition is completely one sided and does not in any way represent what is trying to be accomplished. They even say "Past FCC attempts to regulate set-top boxes have been a complete failure." which I assume relates to the CableCard mandate. The only reason it was a "failure" (or at least not as successful as it could have been) is because the people behind this petition (the cable companies) did everything in their power to make it fail.

What the government is looking to do now is replace the CableCard with a software-only solution, so you will not have to rent anything from your cable company (no CableCard or set-top box rental required) and can just use your own compatible device. Will it be successful? Probably not, because the cable companies will do everything in their power to make sure it doesn't work, just like they do for CableCards.

I think it's sleazy to complain about the government being a failure when you are the one sabotaging their attempts at very turn. Essentially what they are saying is "the laws you made had loopholes that allowed us to prevent them from being successful".

KevinRush

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#9

Post by KevinRush » Wed Apr 27, 2016 9:39 pm

Does anyone know of a legitimate way to support the effort by the FCC? Remember when we all were forced to rent our telephone from the phone company? When the laws changed and we were able to purchase our phones from many companies, phones improved. I think the same would happen for Cable TV.

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